Erwin Schrodinger — "By the way, I never realized that to be nonbelieving, to be an atheist, was a th…"
By the way, I never realized that to be nonbelieving, to be an atheist, was a thing to be proud of. It went without saying as it were.
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More from Erwin Schrodinger
"The scientific picture of the world is a simplification, an abstraction, and it is not the whole truth."
"The great difficulty is to get rid of the idea that we are separate from the world."
"The path to knowledge is paved with doubt."
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About Erwin Schrodinger (1887-1961)
Austrian physicist who shared the 1933 Nobel for the wave equation that bears his name and the famous cat thought-experiment. Closely associated with Werner Heisenberg (matrix-mechanics rival who reached the same physics by different math) and Albert Einstein (his pen-pal on quantum interpretation). For an intellectual contrast, see Niels Bohr, Danish physicist and architect of the Copenhagen interpretation — Schrödinger's cat thought-experiment was specifically designed to ridicule Bohr's 'observer-dependent reality' reading of quantum mechanics — Schrödinger thought the Copenhagen interpretation was absurd; the cat was meant as reductio ad absurdum.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
The speaker expresses that atheism wasn't a bold stance or identity for them — it was simply the default, unremarkable conclusion of rational thinking. No pride was attached because no struggle was involved. Disbelief in god required no announcement or courage; it was as natural and obvious as any other self-evident fact, needing no special acknowledgment or celebration.
Relevance to Erwin Schrodinger
Schrödinger was a physicist who spent his career reducing reality to mathematical structure and wave equations. His intellectual framework was empirical and rigorously logical. Having formulated quantum wave mechanics and grappled with fundamental questions about observation and reality, religious supernaturalism simply had no explanatory foothold. His atheism was a byproduct of his scientific worldview, not a rebellious position.
The era
Schrödinger worked through the early-to-mid 20th century, a period when Europe's educated scientific class was broadly secular, particularly in Vienna and later Berlin. Post-WWI intellectual culture had deeply questioned religious institutions. Among academic physicists — Bohr, Heisenberg, Einstein's circle — naturalistic worldviews were common currency, making overt atheism less a declaration than an unstated professional baseline.
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